If You Drink . . . : . . . don’t <i> walk</i> . Every year, thousands of pedestrians drink too much and die in traffic accidents.

“If you drink too much alcohol,” according to an ancient Egyptian saying, “you will fall down and break your leg.”

Those Egyptians obviously knew something the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is just starting to look into: drinking and walking.

According to the feds, of the 5,500 pedestrians killed and 96,000 injured each year in traffic accidents, 30% to 40% are drunk.

Drunk driving remains the far bigger problem and accounts for more deaths and injuries in the United States, but drunk walking is beginning to get the attention it merits.

The problem appears so intractable that federal Department of Transportation officials have allocated $370,000 next year to study how and why this type of accident occurs. A nonprofit worldwide group--the International Council on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety--also recently vowed to study the problem.

“The alcohol-related pedestrian accident is the one that we probably know the least about,” says Mike Brownlee of the NHTSA. “We need to do additional work to know exactly where and in what sense does alcohol play a role. The study will pick apart these accidents to a far greater degree than we’ve seen before.”

Pedestrian deaths make up the second largest category of vehicle-related fatalities. The victims tend to fall into three groups: young children, elderly people and intoxicated people, says Patricia Waller, director of the Transportation Research Institute at the University of Michigan.

“For drivers, at least we have a licensing system and there is some way to (educate) them,” she says. But, “for pedestrians and bicyclists, we have no way to reach them and make sure they know the rules of the road. We have paid amazingly little attention to these people in our overall traffic safety programs.”

And there are few solutions for curbing the number of alcohol-related pedestrian accidents.

One problem is that little is known about these accidents. According to the NHTSA, most drunk walkers are males and between 25 and 34. Most fatalities occur in urban areas, usually on surface streets but not necessarily at traffic intersections.

Two-thirds of the fatal accidents occur at night.

But even given these characteristics, it’s hard to describe the typical accident involving the drunk walker, says Dr. Julian Waller, a University of Vermont researcher on alcohol and injuries. (He is not related to Patricia Waller.)

In one study, researchers analyzed accidents in three urban areas to look for neighborhoods that could be targeted for pedestrian safety programs. But they found the details of the accidents were highly variable.

Still, many theories have been proposed about how these accidents happen.

Some traffic experts say the accidents occur near nightclubs and bars and in areas where the homeless live. Laws that allow right turns on red lights also foster accidents at certain intersections.

There is even an accident known as the “prone pedestrian,” involving people so intoxicated that they lie down or pass out in the roadway.

“People try to walk home and they are so inebriated they may lie down on the asphalt, because it is still warm from the heat of the day, and get run over,” says Kay Colpitts, chairwoman of a committee on pedestrians for the federal Transportation Research Board.

Many of these accidents might have been avoided if pedestrians had been more visible.

“Some European countries (do) distribute dangle tags that are reflective that people can attach to the zipper of their jacket to make them more visible,” Colpitts says.

Other potential solutions are providing public education in high-risk locations, such as night spots; increasing the use of buses, taxis and other public transportation, and more training in responsible alcohol service for restaurant and night club employees.

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Although fewer people drink and drive nowadays, many Americans still don’t understand the other dangers of drinking too much, experts say. And tests on drunk walkers involved in accidents show that they are often very, very intoxicated. People may believe that they can drink more than they normally would if they intend to walk home.

According to the American College of Surgeons’ Major Trauma Outcome Study, 49% of seriously or fatally injured pedestrians had consumed alcohol and 24% of those had blood-alcohol concentrations greater than .20. (In California, the legal limit for drivers is .08.)

Another federal study showed that 33% of the pedestrians hit by vehicles had blood-alcohol concentrations of greater than .10, compared to 14% of drivers. In 6.5% of the accidents, both the driver and pedestrian were intoxicated at a level of .10 or higher.

Officials are also studying the question of whether programs to reduce drunk driving have added to the pedestrian problem.

“There is some data that indicate that when you crack down on driving drunk, you stand to increase the number of people walking drunk,” Colpitts says.

For this reason, some people criticize the popular concept of having a designated driver because it might lead others to believe that they are safe to drink to intoxication, says Terrance Schiavone, president of the National Commission Against Drunk Driving.

“Eventually, everyone will get out of a car and walk someplace. And you might step out at the wrong time because you are impaired,” he says. “So we and most others support the idea that the driver doesn’t drink at all and others should be responsible and not become intoxicated.”

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Many traffic safety officials believe that a punitive approach to drunk walking won’t work.

For example, Los Angeles law enforcement officials frequently arrest drunk pedestrians on the charge of being drunk in public, says Art Anderson of the state’s Office of Traffic Safety. But instead of a fine or jail time, the pedestrians are usually placed in detoxification centers.

Julian Waller also advocates more medical help for people with serious alcohol problems. For example, he says, hospital emergency rooms should routinely test victims of any kind of accident for alcohol. Only about 60% of hospitals do this now, he adds.

“If someone comes into the hospital injured, you need to get a blood-alcohol concentration. You need to get a history on alcohol use, and then get the people who need it into treatment,” he says.

For many inebriated pedestrians, however, emergency room treatment comes too late--contrary to the myth that people in accidents aren’t hurt as badly when drunk.

“We know alcohol increases the risk of injury,” Julian Waller says. “If you take two people, one of whom has consumed alcohol and one who hasn’t, and they both get hit, the one with alcohol is much more likely to be injured seriously and die at the scene.”

Drunk Walking Thousands of pedestrians are killed by automobiles each year - and many of them are drunk. While great strides have been made to reduce the numbers of people driving drunk, the portion of drunk pedestrians being injured or killed has changed little in the past decade. * DRIVERS INVOLVED IN A FATAL PEDESTRIAN CRASH Showing a blood-alcohol content greater or equal to .10;

1982: 20%

1992: 12% * FATALLY INJURED PEDESTRIANS Showing a blood-alcohol content greater or equal to .10;

1982: 39%

1992: 36%

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Source: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration